


Bedbound

by Ias



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Hallucinations, Insanity, M/M, Sastiel Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 04:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/617869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Sam's hell raging through him, Castiel is paralyzed and suffering from increasingly personal hallucinations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bedbound

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Sastiel Week](http://sastielweek.tumblr.com/) Christmas Exchange for Noel. The prompt was "Bed sharing". Many thanks to my beta [Jess](http://gabrielsaunteredvaguelydownwards.tumblr.com/)!

So far, this appeared to be one of his better days.

He had successfully navigated the hallways during free time without stopping to listen to what the wallpaper was telling him, and for a while he’d managed to close his eyes when the voices burned too brightly. Of course, his madness was never subdued for long. How Sam had survived for so long with this festering sore in his mind, Castiel would never know or understand.

On days like these, he spent most of his time in bed. On every other day he did the same, but he found it most helpful to focus on the positive. Every day he spoke less, moved less, ate less. He could no longer rely on his senses to determine what was real, and the demon Meg had for the most part stopped trying to communicate when he spent a day addressing her as a plastic plant.

It would only be a matter of time before he ceased to do anything at all. He didn't delude himself into thinking it would bring anything resembling peace; the further he retreated into his mind, the more he realized what a cracked and broken place it had become. Sam's madness coursed along the fibers of his being, picking apart the fault lines that had already been shaken into him and turning them into fissures.

Castiel had been many things. For millennia he had been a soldier of God, resolute and eternal and not prone to change. But in the past few years he had mutated. God, Leviathan, man; it had been such a long time since he had simply been himself. And now that he was, or thought he was at least, he could already feel himself hurtling towards something entirely different. He could feel Sam’s madness lodged in his grace, rotting him from the inside. It was as if Castiel the angel wasn’t meant to exist anymore. He could not find much fault in that.

“You look thoughtful, brother.” That same familiar voice. He’d stop shuddering at it in the past couple weeks, but the sound of it still made a shiver run through his grace.

Castiel lifted his head from the hard pillow of his hospital bed and made eye contact with the creature on the wardrobe. It looked somewhat like Lucifer’s vessel, Nick, but recently it had started to decay; sometimes the tattered shape of a wing would shoot out of its body like a bolt of lightning, gone the next minute, and its face was twisted and obscene. Pieces of Castiel’s memory were bleeding into Sam’s, bits of angel superimposed over the shape of a man. Castiel frowned. In reality, the apparition was neither.

“You are not my brother,” he insisted, letting his head fall back on the pillow. The apparition—Castiel refused to give it his brother’s name—laughed.

“Perhaps not. I’m a bit of a mix, really. It’s all about perception, you know.” It tapped the side of its head knowingly. “Right now, I’m Sam’s little patch of Hell. But now that it’s your noggin I’m squatting in, who knows what I’ll become.” The grin on its face spread wider than human features should have allowed it, and Castiel forced himself to look away. At first the madness had stayed contained in the image of his brother, but lately the barriers had been breaking down and spilling out; like a virus, Sam’s hell was evolving to best attack its new host.

It made sense that his hallucination should know exactly which of his fears to play upon; that was, essentially, the point. But unsurprisingly, knowing to expect the torment that was coming did very little to comfort him.

“I profess, I’m real curious myself,” Not-Lucifer said. “Or as curious as an embodiment of mental and metaphysical trauma is capable of being. There’s so much potential here, for one. You sure have fucked up a bunch, buddy.”

Castiel stared straight up at the ceiling, trying to clear his mind. Such tactics hadn’t worked so far, but he was nothing if not stubborn.

“My bets are on God-you, personally,” the hallucination said, picking at its nails with a violently pink nail-file. “I mean, not to down-play your other greatest hits or anything, but wiping out millions of people ranks pretty high on your list of personal failings. Or who knows,” its tone turned malicious, “maybe you’ll get the real deal. It’s been a while since you’ve seen our father’s face. I doubt you’ll even hallucinate it properly.”

“Shut up,” Castiel snapped. He could feel the madness seething just under the surface of his consciousness, ready to surge up and turn the sunlight into spears that would pierce his body and hold him rigid until nightfall. All he wanted was to get away, to take to the air and see if he could outrun this swelling agony in his grace, but he knew he had to stay. Sam, Hell-touched, wretched, and indubitably human, had survived this sickness before. Castiel was an angel, yet he could only hope to do what Sam Winchester had accomplished before him.

"Night's coming," Not-Lucifer observed. "I'll leave you to your thoughts, 'brother'. Enjoy them while you can." A second later Castiel was alone.

Well, not quite. Meg sat with her feet on the edge of his bed, her nose buried in a tabloid magazine. He found her like that on most of his more lucid days; he supposed demons were fans of habit.

Castiel licked his lips, a distinctly human gesture but a necessary one nonetheless. "Meg," he said, his voice coming out dry and hoarse. Her eyes darted over the edge of her magazine and she tossed it to the side without a thought.

"Welcome back, Major Tom," she said snidely, leaning forward to inspect him. "See anything interesting while you were floating around in that head of yours?"

"I need the latest news," he said, ignoring her. "Sam, Dean, are they...?"

"As enterprisingly hard to kill as ever," Meg said. "Though they haven't gotten hold of Dick yet either." Castiel let his head fall back on the lumpy pillow. They should not have needed to face this challenge alone. The last thing Castiel would have ever wanted was for the Winchesters to get pulled into yet another apocalypse. That had been the point of everything, after all. But clearly God had other plans, and Castiel had been a fool to try and stand against them. Such things were best left to the Winchesters, and he was not a Winchester. His actions had proven that. He wished he could put the blame on the influence of the souls, but even before that he had reached into Sam's mind and torn down his wall, unleashing this thing into him and leaving it to fester for months. That had been his own will alone, and the weight of it pulled on him more than any of his multiple sins.

He could feel his skin tingling, his tongue slowly turning to stone as the room began to tilt around him. It was dragging him back inside himself, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He closed his eyes. He had earned nothing less.

"I'm sorry, Sam," he whispered through numb lips.

"Sam's not here, sweetums," Meg said, brushing the hair off his forehead with fingers that warped his face like clay. Castiel dissolved.

 

* * *

 

He had never especially prided himself on his imagination, but as it turned out his madness could be quite creative. Once the room had filled with water and then frozen into ice, and he had laid there in the cold, dense silence for what felt like a millennia--and he should know. Times like those he could allow himself some peace, but peace soon bred thoughts and his thoughts bred misery. Other times he would feel the heat of hellfire on his face, but worse than the physical pain was the knowledge that Sam had suffered through the same. That thought chased him deeper and deeper into his mind, hounding him with how he could have caused so much suffering to the person who had been his friend. Sam had been so strong, and so full of faith, and Castiel had used that to cut him down. At least during his time playing God he had acted with the best interests of humanity in mind. With Sam, he had acted only for himself.

"Well, well, well." The voice cut through the haze in his head and sent him jolting upright in bed. Meg was nowhere to be found; a white hot square of moonlight from the window sprawled across the sheets in his lap, and outside he could hear the trees whispering back and forth in a wind. He couldn't be sure if this was reality or just something resembling it.

"Rise and shine, Castiel." The voice sounded familiar; at first he thought it was Lucifer's, and indeed there were moments when he was certain it was, but something was different in it. Something that made Castiel very uneasy.

"Who are you?" he said, eyes raking the shadows around the room. Was it a trick of his human eyes, or were they growing darker?

"Hmm," the voice purred, "I'm not sure yet. Why don't we find out?" A figure peeled away from the darkness on the wall, prowling around Castiel's little island of light. As it moved, it changed; one moment it was small, almost childlike, and the next a man, then a woman. Sam could only glimpse its face, and looking for too long made his eyes hurt.

"I'm surprised it took this long, to be honest," it said, its voice no longer resembling Lucifer's at all. "I hope it’ll be worth the wait." As the figure circled his bed and became increasingly more solid, Castiel felt a growing horror rising up from his center. One moment he glimpsed the face of Claire Novak, a smear of her father's blood on her cheek; the next it was Balthazar, his friend's chest laid open by Castiel's blade. Crowley’s twisted smirk made an appearance before the apparition’s face seemed to warp between the thousands of faces Castiel had stamped the life out of. He tried to twist his neck to look away, but it was as if the vertebrae in his neck had calcified. His eyelids refused to close.

“Stop,” he croaked, powerless to do anything else. A quiet chuckle was all he got in return as the figure settled into a corner, its shape becoming more solid like plaster settling into a mold. It rolled its broad shoulders, twisted the imaginary cricks out of its neck, and stepped into the light. The face of Sam Winchester stared down at Castiel with lightly amused eyes.

“Figures,” it said in Sam’s voice, a voice that made Castiel’s nerves scream blasphemy as the apparition returned to its circuit around his bed. “All those lives you took, all that sin to choose from, and still you default to me. Let me say, I’m almost flattered.”

“No,” Castiel whispered, his eyes growing wide with horror. “Not him. Not like this.”

“You don’t get to choose, Cas,” Sam said not-unkindly, pausing at the foot of Castiel’s bed. “Sorry man, but you’re stuck with me.” Castiel twisted his neck away and gritted his teeth, his breath hissing as he struggled with the uproar in his head. He was fighting it, fighting with every ounce of strength still left in his grace, but the madness had its hooks in him now.

“So,” Sam said, sliding to sit on the edge of Castiel’s bed and clasping his hands together. “I don’t really feel like just sitting around waiting for your mind to crack open. Why don’t we talk? I know you miss hearing my voice.”

“You’re not him,” Castiel said, struggling to raise his arms or haul his legs out of bed.

Sam shrugged. “True. But I’m a pretty convincing copy, don’t you think? You built Sam from the ground up when you pulled his bacon out of the fire, after all. All the knowledge you used, I have now. And let’s face it, I’m as close to any sort of contact as you’re likely to get at this point. Might as well savor it.”

It was sickeningly true. Castiel’s jaw might as well have been wired shut, but Sam just smiled ruefully and shook his head. “Always so stubborn. Well, that’s okay.” He leaned forward and dragged phantom fingers over Castiel’s forehead. “In the end, I don’t have to do a thing.”

Still twitching and struggling, Castiel could do nothing but listen.

“See, with Sam it was different,” Sam was saying, brushing a strand of Castiel’s hair off his damp forehead. “Even if Sam didn’t always believe that he was good, he always tried to do better. Down to his very core, Sam will never stop trying to be good. It’s a basic fact of his being. But you,” Not-Sam smiled. “Oh, Castiel. Dean sure did a good job of teaching you self-hatred. And what he laid the foundations for, you perfected. I’d say there’s not a speck in you that believes you’re any better than the demons you cavort with.” His smile turned sad, almost pitying. “The best part is, you’re one hundred percent right.”

A feeling like someone reaching into Castiel’s grace and twisting worked its way through him. He knew it wasn’t really Sam talking, that it just looked and sounded and felt like him, but if Sam really was sitting right there would he say anything different?

“The answer is no,” the madness said gently. “I’m sorry, I know this must be hard to hear. But Sam can never forgive you for what you did. Oh sure, he might smile and play nice and pretend everything is okay, but deep down, he knows what you are.” He leaned forward and rested his palms on either side of Castiel’s face, the touch almost reverent. “You’re evil, Castiel. It’s the only logical explanation.”

“No,” Castiel growled, twisting his face away. “All my actions, everything I did, were with the best intentions in mind.”

“Well you know what they say about good intentions,” Sam said with a slight shake of his head. “And trust me, I would know. If we were to go through and interview all the people you murdered, what verdict do you think they’d come to about the nature of your morality?” Sam’s face split into an ugly grin. “But I don’t have to convince you; I’ve already won. Lie to yourself as much as you want, but you can’t keep the truth from me. And don’t worry: I’ll be around plenty.”

The last thing Castiel saw before his vision shattered like a mirror was Sam's face smiling down at him.

 

* * *

 

Time lost any meaning it had retained before. Castiel spent three years tangled in the web of a single afternoon, his arms and legs weighted to the bed and unable to move as the hallucinations writhed around him. Another time the days and nights flashed by so quickly that he was afraid by the time he woke up the Winchesters would have been long gone from the world. As it turned out, that worry was ungrounded. He was never going to wake up.

The one thing that stayed constant was the face of his tormentor. Sam that wasn’t Sam seemed to grow realer every day; the creases in his cheeks when he smiled were enough to make Castiel want to throw himself off the bed and beg for forgiveness, but he forced himself to separate the two in his mind. The more distinctions he made between the real Sam and his own, the more his hallucinations took those differences on.

There were times, though, when it was better.

There was one night, when the sheets had turned to molten metal and melded into his skin, that Sam sat down on his bed and touched his hair like he had on that first night. This was different, somehow; his fingers were rougher, his weight on the bed tugging Castiel like gravity. From a long way off Castiel heard him speaking, although he could hardly understand the words. He recognized pity in his eyes, though. Sometimes he thought about that night when he was teetering on the very edge, and it brought him back. Sometimes he wished it wouldn’t.

He didn’t know what would happen if and when he finally gave in. He only knew that it would be bad. But Not-Sam had been right; he knew he deserved this. The only thing that kept him fighting now was habit, and the knowledge that he owed it to Sam to struggle as he had.

Another time he became aware of voices, sounds that didn’t cut into him like the others did. The sounds made their way to him in lazy, undulating waves that rippled his skin like water.

“How is he?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Chrysler. He hasn’t moved in weeks.”

There was a long pause. “Is there anything we can do?”

“You’re welcome to try.”

A few minutes later Castiel felt the familiar weight of someone sitting on the edge of his bed. By now he had realized that the other voice belonged to Sam, but of course he was used to hearing it by now. His mind had played all kinds of tricks on him to get him to let his guard down, and at this point there was nothing he could have seen, heard or felt to convince him of what was really happening.

That didn’t change the fact that he immediately noticed something different. Sam’s hand found Castiel’s own and took it in a firm grip, entwining with Castiel’s fingers and holding it tight.

“Cas,” he said, his voice hoarse with something Castiel couldn’t place. “I don’t know if you can hear me or not. But I’m here for you, Cas. I’m here.” After a moment the presence shifted and Castiel felt his body being nudged aside to make room for Sam’s bulk as he carefully laid himself out by Castiel’s side. His hand never left Castiel’s and his other reached up to stroke Castiel’s brow. The one thing Castiel noticed most of all was Sam’s smell; it was different than it normally was, something like rain and exhaust mixed in with the detergent and soft vanilla that he remembered.

“I’m here,” Sam whispered again, like repeating it enough would make Castiel believe it.

And as far as Castiel could tell, he spent the whole night by his side. To be honest, Castiel hated that hallucination more than most of the others. It was one of the few that he actually wished were real.

Between the violent bouts of his madness, these other visits persisted. Castiel assumed they were a way of drawing out the torment, building him up to be battered down once again. Nothing ever happened except Sam speaking a few terse words with Meg and then spending the night by his side, stroking his hair like he could brush the bad thoughts away with a swipe of his palm. He would whisper things into Castiel’s ear, terrible things, of forgiveness and longing and worst of all, gratefulness. That was how Castiel knew this was still in his head. After what he had done, such sentiments from Sam would be forever limited to fantasy.

Castiel didn't want to do this anymore. He didn't want to hear Sam's voice, taunting or compassionate; he didn't want to feel Sam's fingertips brush over his face and hands or the weight of his body laying next to him. More than anything, he just wanted to let go, but Sam wouldn't let him. Each night he dreamed that Sam slept by his side Castiel found himself tethered by the beating of his heart, like every blip disturbed the intense concentration required to focus on dying. The new smells he carried in on his clothes and hair every time were spikes driven up Castiel’s nose that yanked him back into the world when all he wanted was to leave it.

"I can't stay long." His voice floated in from somewhere far away as the familiar pressure returned to his hand. "Dean and I are after a big one this time. He still doesn't know I'm here. I just thought I'd stop by before I went. You know, just in case."

Castiel felt him settle on the bed, positioning them so that there was room for him as well. This time he wound his arm around the back of Castiel's neck and pulled him even closer. Castiel could feel his chest moving up and down with breath, could smell his shampoo.

"I miss you, Cas," he whispered, burying his face in Castiel's shoulder. "I never would have asked you to do this for me."

And that's why I had to, Castiel wanted to say, wanted to reach out and cup his chin and tell him it was going to be alright. But he had lost that right a long time ago.

"I know you probably think that you deserve this," Sam was saying. "Trust me, I've been around Dean for long enough to know when someone's feeling pretty shitty about themselves. But you shouldn't." He sighed, and the air ticked Castiel's neck. "I've killed people, Cas," he whispered into the dark. "Innocent people. I drank their blood. I freed Lucifer from his Cage, and caused the deaths of thousands of people because I couldn't let go of a vendetta. So trust me when I say that I'm no stranger to fucking up majorly. But I'll tell you something else, Cas: you're not allowed to quit." He pulled back to look at Castiel's face, and Castiel could feel Sam’s eyes on him like the warmth of the sun.

"You hear me, Cas?" he said. "You can't give up. I know it sucks. I know you think you don't deserve to stay. But you owe it to the world to give redemption a shot, and you owe it to me. So don't you fucking die." He paused and a ragged laugh traveled up through his chest. "And if you even think about it, I'll kick your ass to the pearly gates and back."

Castiel would have argued the metaphysical impossibilities of such a task, but even without the leaden weight on his tongue he felt content just to lie there. Maybe this was all in his head. Something told him it wasn't, but there was no way to be sure. And in that moment, he didn't care. It wasn't sweet and it wasn't kind, but he had no use for gentleness. Because at his heart Sam was fire and pride and devotion; and Castiel could relate to that, could believe in that, could do this all for him.

Sam smiled and cupped Castiel’s cheek in his hand, and in a quick moment he was lowering his lips to press a kiss to Castiel's forehead. "I gotta go," he murmured into Castiel's skin. "But I'll be waiting for you, Cas, even if I'm not here. So don't keep me waiting for too long, okay?"

I won't, Castiel thought as Sam pulled away. I'll do this for you.


End file.
